Art Projects We've Loved for Kindergarten Homeschool
/Let me preface this whole post with – I am not the crafty mom. I had 3 babies, then 3 young toddlers, and crafting was the last thing I wanted to do. Art projects have been few and far between in our house (honestly, I left the crafts to their Mother’s Day Out teachers), but when we started homeschooling for kindergarten, I knew I had to get over my disdain for the mess and the chaos involved, because there are important art skills they need to develop!
I stumbled upon Deep Space Sparkle while looking for Kindergarten art lessons and I can’t even tell you what an incredible resource this website is – projects for every grade, explained simply, and all intentionally designed to teach age-appropriate skills they can build on. Deep Space Sparkle has a free download (here) with developmental milestones in art for Kindergarteners through 8th grade – it was a super helpful for me in setting my own expectations and figuring out what to focus on.
Minimal Supplies
With minimal storage for homeschool things in our house, we’ve made do with a short list of art supplies. Aside from construction paper, crayons, watercolors, and tempera paint, the only supplies I’ve bought are watercolor paper (no soggy papers!), a pack of 50 oil pastels, sponges, and a better variety of paintbrushes.
Van Gogh Landscapes - Mom’s on the left, steele’s on the right. I was so impressed with her details!
One Year of Kindergarten Art Projects
Surprisingly, our Art Day Fridays every other week have become one of the things I look forward to most about our homeschool routine! My type-A, control-freak tendencies have had to pipe down as I let go of the reins and let them get after it without me intervening, and the messes have all been worth it. The projects we’ve done are easily adaptable to include the boys (on-level for Kinders but can simplify for 3-4 year olds, minimal hand-holding required) and we’ve all had so much fun working on these together and learning new things. Several are from Deep Space Sparkle; others I just googled or found on Teachers Pay Teachers. Here are the projects we’ve done this year/have planned for the rest of the year, in chronological order to make sense seasonally.
Van Gogh Winter Landscape This one was part of our Advent study – we love and have done several of the Brighter Day Press seasonal studies!
And because I have ZERO chill, I’ve already planned our art projects for first grade, in order based on seasonality. Doing one project every other Friday morning has been really manageable, so we’ll keep that same routine going!
One Year of First Grade Art Projects
Matisse Collages (along with a color wheel review/Matisse video)
Sugar Skulls for Dia De Los Muertos (we’ll watch the movie Coco too)
Field Trip (we’ll go somewhere outdoors and paint landscapes)
Storing Kids’ Art Projects
After our projects have their spotlight on the fridge or the wall, I’ve been storing our favorites in our keepsake file boxes. We don’t have many bulky/oversized things yet, but once we do I might get a separate storage box for those things so we’re not stuffing and folding them. I’m really trying to be selective though and operate under the mindset of “we can’t keep everything.” Simple as that. We don’t have room for it all, we won’t have room for it all, and it’s ok to enjoy things only for a while. We’ve kept 4 or 5 art projects from each semester and so far, that’s manageable.
I hope these lists can be helpful as you’re planning your homeschool lessons, especially if you have younger siblings at home who want to be included. It’s been so fun to see what they create!